OSIOMO INDUSTRIAL PARK: BRIDGING ENERGY GAP

 

The OSIOMO INDUSTRIAL PARK , an indigenous Power Plant, located at Ologbo, in Ikpoba Okha local government area of Edo State, has actually come to stay, to provide the much needed succour and to bridge the gap of power need of the communities that make up Edo state.

The initiative which came on stream with IPP 1 in the year 2020 has made tremendous and commendable impart at cushioning the near zero access to energy as a result of incessant national grid collapse occasioned by decayed infrastructure and inefficient management.

Osiomo Industrial Park, a full grown independent Power Plant which is predominantly preoccupied with the generation, transmission and distribution of power has provided 100 percent access to power to consumers located around the transmission and distribution system since 2020 thereby steadily and consistently bridging the energy gap of the state 

Speaking to Journalists at the facility during a Media tour of the facility, the Edo State born engineer who is from Igun, in Oredo local government area, Benin City, Edo State, Dr Uwa Ijiehon said that his heritage, vision and international experience are the drivers of the project. 

Today, you have seen all our gas supply infrastructure, our second plant, IPP2, which is the real focus of our expansion and we have shown you our IPP1 which was commissioned in April 2020 and you have also seen our transmission lines and very importantly, you have seen our Marine facility which, to our stake holders, is actually the core of this project because that is what gives us marine access which is going to help us move assets for the development of the very large project, particularly the petrochemical and the steel sector. I mentioned those two sectors because the fact of the matter is that, for an industry to be successful and competitive, you have to use local materials because that is what gives you an edge and one of the materials that are local to us here is the gas.

On his working relationship with the Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC), Dr Uwa Ijiehon said, "Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC) is a distribution company and has a distribution license while Osiomo is a generation, transmission and distribution company and we are totally different. We have three licenses which covers generation, transmission and distribution and we also have licence for our gas infrastructure. So, if you look at our energy or power chain, you are talking about five segments, all licensed, whereas the BEDC activities is just restricted to one area which is distribution.

Of course, you know, at the end of the day, we all have the same objective and which is to provide power because when you say our relationship with BEDC, I assume you are talking about the power side of our business but ours is an industrial park and we are doing a whole lot of different things and power is a part of it and so what BEDC does is distribution of power and that is a segment of what we do and everything we do here are of London standard and our stakeholders are in London.

"We obtained our licenses here in Nigeria in 2015. 

"In terms of power distribution today, in the area where the two companies have a network, the stakeholders have an option and they can choose any of the two, and that is the way it should be. Anybody who is connected to Osiomo and doesn't like it can go to BEDC but if the stakeholder prefers Osiomo, they are welcome.It is vice versa and that is how it should be.

But in absolute terms, people will tell you, today, our tarrif is lower and you can go and measure their availability. Take the village of Ologbo for instance, there was no power in Ologbo for six years and a community where gas is being flared and there is no power, but we have solved that problem. There was nobody to give them power and you can go and check.

On how much Osiomo is positioned to mitigate some of the constraints in the energy sector like the incessant national grid collapse, Dr Ijiehon said, " We can only speak from our own experience. The reality of the situation is that the national grid as it were dates back to decades and all of the typical power line , basically the structure in most cases, is steel and the conductors and the systems, yes the structure, properly constructed can last for sometime but those conductors get old and when that happens the performance deteriorates and most importantly, when that happens they start creating massive losses and one of the biggest challenges we have in the national grid beyond the collapse you are seeing, is also the losses which is estimated to be well above 50 %. So, the truth of the matter is that you need a lot of capital to sustain that. The federal government is making some efforts to correct that and that is commendable. But the fact is that over a period of time, the technology has moved on, engineering has moved on and there is no doubt about it that, having an independent power producer is definitely a solution because if you have more independent grids, eventually, you will be able to connect those independent grids and then you have a national grid and that is another way of engineering it. But for me, one of the critical questions is , what is the financial community opinion about all these? For us engineers, it is always fantastic when we go about our job, we think, oh, we want to change this we want to change that, we want to have a high grid and all sorts of things like that, but at the end of the day, it has to be bankable otherwise you spend a tremendous lot of time and at the end nothing much is achieved because it really has to be bankable and what is the option of the financial community about how the energy sector is to be developed and that is the critical question. You know whether it is the local investor or the foreign investors and for us as you have seen today, we represent local investor and local financier and we represent also international investors and international financier and we also represent the engineering Constituency. We bridge all the gaps and it is that knowledge and experience that we have brought to bear and I think that most people know that most of the facility that has been invested in this project come from us and no third parties and what that means is that we are both investors and financiers and the right questions should go to the financiers. What is the right structure , be it generation, transmission or distribution that the financier would be comfortable with?. It shouldn't be that you come up with a structure and you go and ask if they can finance it, no, let them also be part of that discussion and deliberations and the decision making process.

On the capacity of Osiomo to deliver on set target, Dr Uwa Ijiehon said that the demand for energy is high but that they are conveniently and adequately positioned to meet the increasing demand 

"On the capacity of the Osiomo plant, the demand for power is there and the integrated nature of our project on the gas side, we have the facility that can give us a hundred (100) mega watts and the 33 KVA transmission lines can give us 75 mega watts if we step up to 132KVA it can give us more than that then the 11KVA that goes straight to the industrial park at Ologbo can give us up to 20 mega watts and that is already close to 100 mega watts and so, what we do is, when we now see the availability and the load, all we have to do is to increase the generation to meet that demand. So, the critical thing is that we can easily go up to 100 Mega watts and I give you an example which is where the discussion about the financing comes in. If you have an IPP project and you say it is going to be 20 to 25 mega watts supply around the metropolis. It is not going to be very easy to convince a financier because of incidents of thefts, bypassing and all of that and you know all the generation companies are shut down but however, if we have a process plant and are many that require 50 Mega watts and the whole bases on that process plant is clear, the commodity, the financing, etc, then it would be very easy and because we have our independent network that we are supplying to it becomes easy for us.

"We have single phase meters which is for just a small house and we have 3 phase meters for a large house,a small business , we have MD meters for large businesses and beyond that we are developing a process plant that will use 10, 20 even 50 Mega watts and again the focus on aggregate Mega watts is not really the right thing but is on the per capital consumption of power that is made available as well as the access to power. A country like Egypt , access to power is a hundred percent according to the world Bank record and Nigeria is fifty percent and you can see that from the Ologbo example. Before we came, there was no power,no infrastructure whatsoever . The power consumption per capital in Western Europe and in the USA, you have countries that have well above five thousand (5,000 - 10,000) kilowatts per person and Nigeria is below 200 but what we have done in consonance with our objective is that the customers around our network today, the power that is available to them is over 1,000 kilowatts and the access to power is 100% and so what we have done is to identify our catchment area and improve on the access to power of the catchment area and then start expanding the catchment area .

Yes, as anticipated, the demand is high and every day we have prospective customers coming to see us and the point is that we have to make sure we generate and distribute and get paid.

" On energy theft, it is difficult to place a value but we don't want to overemphasize this even though from day one we were aware of the possibility of energy theft as this is a common place in Nigeria. But the first thing we have done is to make sure our network is brand new and we are not connected to the national grid and when you do it right you then are able to deal with it but we have focused very much on using new technology to address those issues and all our customers are on prepaid meters and we have different ways of monitoring our meters even in terms of value. Like I said, we know how much power we are sending out and how much we should get in return. One thing I can assure you is that typical of most processes,at the beginning , the losses were zero but by the way when you talk about losses people talk about technical and commercial losses. Our technical losses are minimal, almost zero percent because all the facilities are new but in five years from now it will no longer be so and because of that we are already making plans to re conduct all the lines . But on the so called commercial losses , yes a number of things have happened and at times you find outright theft but the incidences have reduced and for us the focus is employing technical means to address the issue. I also say from observation, we see a lot of respect from what we have done because people understand that we have not used government resources in any way for the project but solely our resources and people respect us for that . However, there is the propencity for energy theft and we have found technical means to address that.

We started the whole process since 2013 and we started constructing and developing up to 2018 and fully started operation in 2020 and it is pretty clear that the engineers that we have here with us are predominantly Nigerians and they have done tremendously well and not only that, you Saw our IPP 1 which started operating since November 2020 and today you have seen our IPP 2 wholely developed, designed and constructed by Nigerians and every day we encounter challenges and these Nigerian engineers fixed those challenges and that is a testament. I am a Nigerian and I did my first degree and my PHd abroad and I have worked and continue to work at many international fora both as engineer and investment banker and I know that I have acquainted myself adequately well and in practical terms here where you are standing right now is our technology center where we train our engineers . Every quarter we send out invitations to engineering graduates and when they apply,they go through a test and the pass mark is 70% and those who are successful come into the training center where we train them both theoretically and in practicals working in plants and after 3 months those who do well are employed and believe me I went through the same process and the process is working perfectly and in a nutshell I believe that the Nigerian engineers have actually proven themselves.